© 2024 KRCU Public Radio
90.9 Cape Girardeau | 88.9-HD Ste. Genevieve | 88.7 Poplar Bluff
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Every Tuesday at 7:42 a.m. and 5:18 p.m., Tom Harte shares a few thoughts on food and shares recipes. A founder of “My Daddy’s Cheesecake,” a bakery/café in Cape Girardeau, a food columnist for The Southeast Missourian, and a cookbook author, he also blends his passion for food with his passion for classical music in his daily program, The Caffe Concerto.

Soufflés

daisysworld.net

If chefs are ever concerned that their cooking will not rise to the occasion, it's when making soufflés.

Ever since its creation by the great French chef Marie-Antoine Careme, the soufflé has been both the king of desserts and something of a prima donna. As Jane Ellis, writing in House Beautiful magazine, observes, "soufflés often dazzle the diner, but fill the cook with fear."

But the truth is that the soufflé's reputation as a difficult dish is undeserved -- it's image in this regard has been puffed up. Which, incidentally, is what the word literally means in French. In fact, as The Joy of Cooking points out, one of the reasons soufflés are so popular with restaurant chefs is that they are so easy to prepare!

Marion Cunningham, author of the venerable Fannie Farmer Cook Book, pinpoints two primary fears associated with making soufflés and contends that both are groundless. She says the number one cause of fear of soufflés is that they must be served as soon as they come from the oven, "but we serve many dishes directly from the oven and think nothing of it," she rightly observes. The second cause of soufflé anxiety according to Cunningham, is fear that the soufflé will rise a little and then fall flat as a pancake -- or worse yet, that it won't rise in the first place. She maintains that this fear, too, is unwarranted. As long as the egg whites are properly beaten to stiff, glossy -- but not dry -- peaks, the soufflé should rise perfectly.

And, of course, you can always exercise discretion. Don't tell your guests you're serving a soufflé until you present it to them at the table. That way, if something goes wrong you can call it a custard, a strada, or even a baked omelet -- and no one will be the wiser!
 

Tom Harte is a retired faculty member from Southeast Missouri State University where he was an award-winning teacher, a nationally recognized debate coach, and chair of the department of Speech Communication and Theatre.
Related Content